Doenges and Brower

I chose Doenges because I know that writers tend to have highly intelligent and developed views on life, mostly because the better writers basically examine the human condition for a living. I suppose I should have realized that "writer" in this case didn't necessarily mean author, because I was disappointed when I found out that she was a columnist, not a fiction writer, although she does mention that she tried to "write the great American novel," but was never able to sell it. It shows in the way she talks. Beneath the dry wit, she seems to be a very thoughtful person who has considered many of the major questions about humanity that we all want to know. And, with more than ninety years to do so, why wouldn't she, even disregarding the fact that her "great American novel" never made it big? I think that the fact that she didn't succeed has something to say about the American dream, the dream that anyone can be successful. It goes to show that success, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. Sure, not everyone can write a famous novel which puts them on the level of writers like Fitzgerald and Faulkner and Vonnegut, but that doesn't make a person any less successful. I think the misconception that everyone could write the metaphorical "great American novel" was part of what led to the Great Depression. Everyone wanted to be rich and famous, and many were irresponsible in getting to that position, which was a common one in the 1920s. A person who could be humbly satisfied as a newspaper columnist as opposed to a great novelist has a higher chance of succeeding because of the attainability of his or her goals.

I was interested in Brower for two reasons, both pertaining to his one-word description: "environmentalist." The first is that this is a very unique occupation relative to the rest of the subjects of Terkel's interviews. It is also a uniquely modern occupation. No one called themselves an environmentalist in the sense that it is used today back during the depression or even on into the fifties. I am all for unique perspectives, so this was an easy choice. I also was intrigued by this one because my mom is a fairly involved environmentalist herself. She donates to World Wildlife Fund, grows a garden in our back yard, and is involved with butterfly watching at Ryerson woods. This personal connection made me think that I might be more interested in this person than others with whom I don't share as much of a personal connection. What I found was that despite his description as an environmentalist, his environmentalism is a small part of a far larger idea in his mind: what should the elderly be doing? He makes a good point that the elderly are the people with the most freedom because there isn't a whole lot that can be taken away from them. When a person is in retirement and suddenly finds him or herself with so much free time, there has to be something that drives a person to keep going. With Brower it was saving the environment, but it could have just as easily been education that was his primary focus. He certainly had a unique perspective, just as I thought. It struck me that he talked about his experience with World War II because what stuck with him wasn't the fighting, as was the case with most WWII veterans. Instead, he noticed the society and culture of the Germans, specifically pointing out what role the elderly played in Germany. I would be interested to know what convinced him to go in the first place and what impact the war had on the rest of his life, because with such a unique perspective on the war itself, it couldn't have been the ordinary propaganda that brought him into the war and it couldn't have been the common mental scarring that he left with.

Intro, Dante, and Stallings

The introduction to this section struck me as particularly interesting since I'm a junior and starting to think about what I want to do. What really struck me was how Terkel sorts out what is important from what's not. He talks about each worker as a human with a life, instead of a number. Shouldn't everyone be treated as a unique individual? Payed as such? And not treated as unique in the condescending, mommy-still-loves-you sense, but as an intelligent person with ideas and dreams and hopes, as were the two workers I read about. I guess it's the whole idea that someone has to do the work, and if it's necessary, then why shouldn't it be rewarded as such? What first got me thinking about this was his paragraph about turning your work into an art. Just because a person is a spot welder doesn't mean he loses all of that intensely human desire to make beautiful things. Dolores Dante mentioned in passing that she studies guitar in her free time. When I finish college and decide where to go from there, I will want to do a job that is satisfying in and of itself, not something that requires that I practice guitar in my free time, although given my current inclinations, I most likely will anyway.

When a person does a job he or she doesn't like, it begins to dull their minds. Stallings, from his description of his job, basically spaces out for eight and a half hours each day. He says that his job would be more interesting if he could try his hand at different jobs on the assembly line, and why shouldn't he? Certainly, there would be a few bad cars as each person learns a different role, but eventually the line would have a whole lot of "utility men," as he calls them. If someone gets sick, someone else can pick up their position. And, to boot, everyone would be more interested in their job because it would be a different perspective each day. I think that hearing about Stallings and Dolores really helped me understand from an emotional standpoint why workers were striking and protesting under Carnegie and the other "steel tyrants" of the early 1900s. They realized that those terrible conditions and horrible injustices were the rest of their lives spread out in front of them. Who wouldn't want something more? Who wouldn't be angry with that? Dante enjoys what she does, and Stallings justifies his staying with the job, but in the conditions of the Carnegie steel workers, it can be hard to do either.